The Amazon Echo is the key to making your home a smart home. Some might say that Alexa is stupid, but having one device that can dim your lights, update you with the latest news, and adjust your thermostat is pretty neat.

Even if you don’t have any other smart home gadgets, the Echo is a great music player. Whether you’ve got the full Echo or opted for the Dot or Tap, here are all the ways you can play your music on your Alexa-enabled speaker.

Amazon Music Options

Amazon offers two music options that have similar names but a few key differences. They both work with your Echo, so let’s break them down. Since your Amazon account is connected to your device, adding the services below to your account automatically sets up the Echo with them, too.

Amazon Prime Music once let you upload your own tracks to the Amazon cloud, but the company has discontinued this feature. If you have uploaded any music to your Amazon music player in the past, you can access it until January 2019. After that, it will disappear.

Any music you buy from Amazon digitally is automatically added to your account, so you can stream those albums to your Echo without any extra steps. Open the Amazon Music player web interface and click Upload your music to your cloud library on the left side. This prompts you to download and install the Amazon Music player app for Windows or Mac.

To play Prime Music on your Echo, try these Alexa music commands:

“Play my music.”

“Play the Top Pop station.”

“Play classical music.”

“Play U2 from the 80s.”

“Play the most popular Pearl Jam album.”

“Play Prime Music for dancing.”

Note that this benefit isn’t available to those who share a Prime membership with family members.

Music Unlimited costs $8/month or $79/year for Prime members (in addition to the cost of Prime). Interestingly, you can also subscribe to Music Unlimited’s Echo Plan for $4/month if you only want to listen on your Echo device.

This plan only lets you listen on a single Echo device though, so it’s no good if you want to listen across multiple devices. You should subscribe to the Individual Plan if you want to listen on multiple devices.

Aside from the more expansive catalog, Music Unlimited basically stacks with the Amazon Music core. You’ll just need to decide whether the additional subscription is worth it for you. There’s a 30-day trial available that lets you ensure your favorite tunes are available.

Third-Party Music Services

Do you prefer another music service to Amazon’s offerings for playing music on Alexa? No problem: your Echo can play your music from several other sources.

Before you start listening to music from third-party services, you’ll need to connect your accounts. To get everything set up, open up the Alexa app on your phone or visit the web interface. Slide out the left sidebar and click Settings. Under the Accounts header, tap Music & Media.

As discussed earlier, the Amazon Music entry should already be connected to your Amazon account. You can link your Spotify, Pandora, and iHeartRadio accounts here. The Echo also supports TuneIn Radio, but you don’t have to sign in to use it. Note that using Spotify on your Echo requires a Premium subscription.

Once you’re all signed in, tap the Choose default music services button at the bottom of the page. Here you can select your preferred service for both your music library and radio stations. That way, when you say “Alexa, play some music from Prince,” you don’t have to specify that you want to use Spotify every time.

To review your stations and music on each of these services, open the left sidebar in the Alexa app and tap Music & Books. Tap a service and you can manage your music collection for each one. Of course, you can also use the dedicated apps for your phone, too.

Can Alexa Play Apple Music?

Though Apple Music is a popular music streaming service, Alexa doesn’t support it directly. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t use it at all. The best way to use Apple Music with your Echo is to connect it to your iPhone or Mac as a Bluetooth speaker. See below for instructions on how to do this.

Use Bluetooth for Everything Else

Aside from Kindle and Audible (which are obviously for books, not music), the list of officially Echo-compatible music services ends there. However, you can easily send your tunes from Google Play Music, Apple Music, or anywhere else by using your Echo as a Bluetooth speaker.

It’s easy to do this: just say Alexa, pair and your Echo will start looking for Bluetooth devices to connect to. Pop open the Bluetooth options on your phone or computer and look for Echo-XYZ to pair them. After this, play any audio from your device and you’ll hear it on your Echo.

Alexa now supports basic audio commands when acting as a Bluetooth speaker, so you can say Alexa, pause or Skip this song to control playback without lifting a finger. When you’re all done, just say Alexa, disconnect and the Echo will break the connection with that device.

What If Alexa Won’t Play Music?

If Alexa won’t play your music, you should first reboot your Echo device by unplugging it for a few minutes and plugging it back in. This should clear up any temporary issues.

If this doesn’t work, and the trouble only occurs with one streaming service, head back to Settings & Accounts > Music & Media in the Alexa app. Remove and re-add the main services you use and try again.

What Do You Listen to Using Alexa?

The Amazon Echo allows you to stream music from pretty much any source you could want. Prime Music is a nice starting point if you don’t have the money to spend on another music subscription. If you don’t want to use Amazon’s options, several third-party services are available. Or just bypass all that and stream your music via Bluetooth.

Whatever your preference, you can get unlimited tunes playing on your Echo in just a few minutes. Which makes the Amazon Echo a worthy purchase for anyone who loves listening to music.

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Chris

December 4, 2018 at 5:44 pm

The article is incorrect that you can no longer upload songs to your Amazon Music Cloud storage account. For subscribers (who have been paying $25/year for music cloud storage), uploads are still allowed until early 2019. Also, all uploaded songs will still be available after early 2019. The major change is simply that you cannot upload additional songs.

That said, that is a major issue, and for Alexa users who want to stream their own library, there is no great solution. There are workarounds, but no solutions.

The net effect is to push people to subscribe to Amazon Music at a minimum of $8/month. Alternatively, and possibly more cheaply, one can switch to Google Home and use the free Google Music storage for streaming music. Quite a pain for Alexa households, particularly ones that have numerous devices used to stream music, but maybe better in the long run. Kudos to Amazon for potentially identifying a revenue stream and surreptitiously pushing people towards it. OTOH, as a loyal Amazon customer for 20 years, it is frustrating and maddening that cloud storage uploads are being disallowed starting in early 2019. Frustrating enough to push us to potentially switch to Google.

I have thousands of songs on iTunes, and when I get into my car they play. Why can't I ask Alexa to play the songs stored in my devices? When I have two devices in my home that understand the spoken word, why do I have to find my phone, pick it up, and manually start the playback. It's all about prime, and other pay services. Why should I pay for content that I already own? And on another rant. I have an Amazon show that sits on the counter with a picture of my motorcycle on the display. What's the point of having a display that displays almost nothing. Can't watch a Youtube video, can't stream anything stored on my devices. It was a natural assumption when I bought the thing that it could display video content. Hopefully this changes before Alexa becomes obsolete.

This is the best description I have found about Alexa music services. For example, information for prime music for people sharing prime benefit/shipping is clearly stated here instead of buried in amazon document.

If you have an iPod Touch, you can play music on your Echo via Bluetooth. If it's an older iPod, you can use a 3.5mm headphone jack to connect it to the Echo Tap only. The Echo and Echo Dot don't have a line-in jack.

Plex is a great way of playing music you already own via Alexa, simply install the plex add in (and run plex media server on your local machine) and then say to Alexa "ask plex to play my music". Plex is free at its most basic level but a life time pass is very very cheap.

Somebody just told me about Plex as I'm irritated at the loss of Amazon Music storage feature. I installed it, enabled it in Alexa and discovered I can't seem to get Alexa to play specific music. So I can't listen to only songs by a single artist or just play one song. Am I missing something?

I own a couple thousand albums via Amazon and have claimed another 100 or so as Prime Member benefit. I also use Cloud Player Premium to fortify the my existing library with content from purchases outside Amazon.

Amazon is mostly terrible at handling classical music, but so is everything else and moreover, I'd be paying for Prime regardless, so the $2/month for Cloud Player seems decidedly reasonable compared to the cost of Spotify or some other premium streaming service.

Ben is a Deputy Editor at MakeUseOf. He holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Grove City College, where he graduated Cum Laude and with Honors in his major. He enjoys helping others and is passionate about video games as a medium.